The Neurobiology of Dispositional Negativity and Attentional Biases to Threat: Implications for Understanding Anxiety Disorders in Adults and Youth

When extreme, anxiety can become debilitating. Anxiety disorders, which often first emerge early in development, are common and challenging to treat, yet the neurocognitive mechanisms that confer increased risk have only recently started to come into focus. Here we review recent work highlighting th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychopathology 2016-11, Vol.7 (3), p.311-342
Main Authors: Shackman, Alexander J., Stockbridge, Melissa D., Tillman, Rachael M., Kaplan, Claire M., Tromp, Do P. M., Fox, Andrew S., Gamer, Matthias
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amygdala
Anxiety
Anxiety disorders
Children
Cognition
Cortex (somatosensory)
Epidemiology
Etiology
Information processing
Life span
Nervous system
Neural networks
Neuroimaging
Neuromodulation
Neurosciences
Personality
Phenotypes
Psychopathology
Risk factors
Vigilance
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Summary:When extreme, anxiety can become debilitating. Anxiety disorders, which often first emerge early in development, are common and challenging to treat, yet the neurocognitive mechanisms that confer increased risk have only recently started to come into focus. Here we review recent work highlighting the importance of neural circuits centered on the amygdala. We begin by describing dispositional negativity, a core dimension of childhood temperament and adult personality and an important risk factor for the development of anxiety disorders and other kinds of stress-sensitive psychopathology. Converging lines of epidemiological, neurophysiological, and mechanistic evidence indicate that the amygdala supports stable individual differences in dispositional negativity across the lifespan and contributes to the etiology of anxiety disorders in adults and youth. Hyper-vigilance and attentional biases to threat are prominent features of the anxious phenotype and there is growing evidence that they contribute to the development of psychopathology. Anatomical studies show that the amygdala is a hub, poised to govern attention to threat via projections to sensory cortex and ascending neuromodulator systems. Imaging and lesion studies demonstrate that the amygdala plays a key role in selecting and prioritizing the processing of threat-related cues. Collectively, these observations provide a neurobiologically-grounded framework for understanding the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders in adults and youth and set the stage for developing improved intervention strategies.
ISSN:2043-8087
2043-8087
DOI:10.5127/jep.054015